News
Hillary Clinton's margin of victory in the 2016 vote count continues to climb, at this point well over a million.
But her impending defeat in the Electoral College comes with familiar signs that the election was stripped and flipped.
These indicators include the realities of pre- and post-election polling; the massive stripping of primarily black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters from computer generated registration rolls mostly maintained by private partisan companies; unverifiable "black box" electronic voting machines and central tabulators, also mostly manufactured and maintained by private corporations, and much more.
Were this election held in any other country, the US State Department and independent monitors from around the world would denounce it as a fraud, and contemplate international intervention.
The Electoral College
For the sixth time in our history, a candidate for President of the United States may have won the popular vote and lost the White House.
This must end.
While the nation—and much of the world—shudders at the thought of a Donald Trump presidency, our electoral system has once again failed to deliver a formal victory to the person who got the most votes.
Hillary Clinton appears to have won the nationwide popular vote. As of about 1 PM eastern time, the tally was roughly 58,909,774 votes (47.6%) for Clinton, versus 58,864,233 votes (47.5%) for Trump. (The exact numbers will change as the vote count continues.)
But Donald Trump's Electoral College tally has exceeded the 270 Electoral College votes needed to take the White House.
There is much more to tell about this. This year’s vote has once again been stripped and flipped by GOP Jim Crow segregationist tactics that disenfranchised millions of primarily African-American and Hispanic citizens.
According to Green Party election observer Tekla Lewin, at Columbus precinct 13-A,B,C, the Godman Guild, six out of 17 voting machines have been taken offline because they are running out of the paper tape that is the only paper trail for any electronic voting. The Presiding Judge called the Franklin County Board of Elections and said he was told “It’s happening everywhere” and that they “don’t have enough technicians.” It started around 4:30pm and the machines are still offline as of 5:15pm.
At the Indianola Presbyterian Church polling site, the Green Party observer reports that there are 24 machines there and they all ran out of paper tape and were taken offline and the paper is being replaced one by one. Two other iVotronic machines have broken down and the two technicians there don't seem to be able to fix them. Voters reported that the screens froze on the touchscreen. About a hundred people are waiting to vote.
Report any further voting problems to these number: 614-374-2380 and 614-253-2571.
Election Day report from Columbus:
We are getting few early reports from Franklin County (Columbus) Ohio that voters are being offered provisional ballots when the lines are long at the polling sites. This happened to Free Press Editor Bob Fitrakis at Precinct 55 in Columbus. A call to the Franklin County Board of Elections verified that the provisional ballots are only supposed to be given out if someone requests one, no to make it a routine option. Historically provisional ballots are rejected at a higher rate than other types of ballots. There is no option to vote on a regular paper ballot instead of a voting machine in Franklin County.Election Day report from Columbus:
What a year it has been for marijuana policy in Ohio – so far. The stunning defeat of Issue 3 at the ballot box last year framed the citizen-led initiative landscapes for both 2015 and 2016. The infamous measure sponsored by Responsible Ohio would have accorded Ohio’s nascent cannabis industry to just ten wealthy investors. Some say RO lost because it was a monopoly. Others cited full legal. A few didn’t think it lost at all.
Opposition to City Council format and city schools levy growing from the grassroots
Feds called to investigate Columbus Police and legality of at-large City Council
Three groups now opposing school levy hike
The Free Press is proud to announce that Project Censored recognized our work exposing election rigging with their 2015-2016 (academic year) Project Censored award for the 4th most censored story in the world. Project Censored cited Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman’s Free Press article “Is the 2016 Election Already being Stripped & Flipped?” posted on freepress.org March 31, 2016 and Wasserman’s appearance on “Democracy Now!” with Amy Goodman broadcast February 23, 2016 where he discussed the book he and Fitrakis released this year: “The Strip and Flip Selection of 2016: Five Jim Crows and Electronic Election Theft.”
On Oct. 12, 2016, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) approved a massive subsidy for FirstEnergy to keep their dirty, dangerous and, now they say, uneconomical Davis-Besse nuclear power plant on Lake Erie in operation.
This bailout will force FirstEnergy’s electric customers to pay about $200 million extra per year for the next three to five years. Though the PUCO made statements about FirstEnergy improving the electric grid, there is nothing in the fine print that would force the company to do anything other than hand this money over to their shareholders. The subsidy could ultimately cost customers $1 billion.
FirstEnergy complained bitterly about the PUCO decision, because they had asked for billions more.
An earlier bailout request by FirstEnergy was approved by the PUCO but ultimately rejected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC.) FirstEnergy’s new request to the PUCO, written slightly differently, is an end-run around the original FERC decision.
Donald Trump’s demand for “monitors” at polling places to prevent a “rigged election” is an old and ugly story.
It’s obviously aimed—-KKK style—-at stopping black and Hispanic citizens from voting. But in fact both major parties have used such terror tactics—- and updated electronic ones—-since the birth of the nation.
The cure—-we call it “the Ohio Plan”—- is scorned by both corporate parties: universal automatic voter registration, transparent registration rolls that can be easily monitored, a national holiday for voting, and universal hand-counted paper ballots that stay in one place and are tallied (and re-tallied) in full public view.
The “rigged election” story dates back to the Constitution. Its Electoral College gave a three-fifths “bonus” to slaveowners for blacks who could not actually vote. The race card carried through Jim Crow segregation and the KKK terror unleashed against post-Emancipation blacks who dared try to vote. It continues through the Drug War and the tens of millions of African-American and Hispanic citizens stripped of their freedom and franchise.
Project Censored has chosen Search Engine Algorithms and Electronic Voting Machines Could Swing 2016 Election as the 4th "Most Censored Story of 2016" with contributions by Free Press writers and editors Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman.
"Because courts have ruled that source code is proprietary, private companies that own electronic voting machines are essentially immune to transparent public oversight, as Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis documented," Project Censored wrote. "On Democracy Now! and elsewhere, Wasserman and Fitrakis have advocated universal, hand-counted paper ballots and automatic voter registration as part of their 'Ohio Plan' to restore electoral integrity."
Every year for 40 years, Project Censored, located at Sonoma State University in California, has chosen the 25 most censored stories of the year.
To read about Project Censored and their top censored stories of 2016, go to: